Sara Lowes

I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego. I graduated from Harvard University in May 2017 with a Ph.D. from the Political Economy and Government program (Economics track). I was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at the at the Stanford King Center on Global Development and an Assistant Professor of Economics at Bocconi University.

I am a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), an Affiliate of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar with the Institutions, Organizations & Growth research program, an Affiliate of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), and an Affiliate of the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA).

I graduated in May 2017 from Harvard University with a PhD from the Political Economy and Government program (Economics track) and from Middlebury College in 2007 with a B.A. in Economics and Political Science. At Harvard I was a Graduate Student Associate of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, an affiliate of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science and the Workshop on African History and Economics, and a recipient of the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship.

Prior to starting graduate school. I worked in Vietnam for a microfinance organization and in Uganda for Innovations for Poverty Action managing randomized controlled trials of development projects. I subsequently worked as a Research Assistant at the Economic Growth Center at Yale University and at Harvard Business School. I also spent a summer studying Arabic in Jordan as a US State Department Critical Language Scholar.

My research interests are at the intersection of development economics, political economy, and economic history. Most recently, I have been working in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I also have research experience in Uganda. Zambia. Ghana. Nigeria. Bolivia and Vietnam.

Fields of Research:

• Development Economics, Economic History, Political Economy

Research Interest:

• Culture, Institutions, Gender